proliferate
/prəˈlɪfəreɪt
/verb [no object]
1Increase rapidly in number; multiply: the science fiction magazines which proliferated in the 1920s...
- One advantage, the developers claim, is that only one remote control will be needed instead of the multiple controls now proliferating in the average household.
- Now, technology is burgeoning and proliferating, and again there is fear.
- There, non-governmental groups are proliferating as poverty increases and trade liberalisation undermines local economies.
Synonyms
increase rapidly, grow rapidly, multiply, become more numerous, mushroom, snowball, burgeon, escalate, rocket, run riot
1.1(Of a cell, structure, or organism) reproduce rapidly: cultured cells often proliferate indefinitely...
- Thus, eye disc cells continue to proliferate until an even larger ecdysone pulse occurs during the middle of the pupal period.
- When active, the stem cells proliferate and expand, building up the follicle and producing cells that make new hair.
- Under typical growth conditions, on the other hand, persisters hardly grow at all, while normal cells rapidly proliferate.
1.2 [with object] Cause (cells, tissue, structures, etc.) to reproduce rapidly: electromagnetic radiation can only proliferate cancers already present...
- At the time, the notion that we could proliferate stem cells from an adult kidney, or any other organ for that matter, was hardly the conventional wisdom that it is today.
- In later life we are not supposed to continue to proliferate tissue at a rapid rate, grow, and accumulate mass, but rather to mature.
Derivatives
proliferative
- In mammals, germ cells undergo a small number of proliferative mitotic cell divisions as they migrate to the gonad.
- They subsequently determined that cells within the ribbon were dividing, implying that they were part of a region of proliferative stem cells.
- Flies homozygous for such hypomorphic mutations reach adulthood, but often exhibit defects during the proliferative stages of gametogenesis.
proliferator
- The possessors want to stop the proliferators, and the proliferators want to defy them as well as ask them to get rid of their own mountainous nuclear arsenals.
- It was noted that even within a class of chemicals such as peroxisome proliferators, individual chemicals had differing target organs and mechanisms of toxicity.
- Binding of the complex to gene regulatory sites on the DNA, termed ‘peroxisome proliferator response elements,’ leads to the increased transcription of numerous genes.
Origin
Late 19th century: back-formation from proliferation.